Apartments and other large buildings are often provided with so-called zone heating and cooling systems wherein a building system is provided with pressurized hot water or coolant. Individual rooms or zones are thermostatically controlled and individual valves responsive to the thermostat are placed in the lines leading to the rooms or zones to allow control of the fluid to the radiators in each area. Inevitably, as with all mechanical devices, these zone control valves require servicing, that is replacement or repair of these seals therein. Heretofore this has required generally shutting down the whole system in order to repair or replace one valve. This can be quite inefficient and also leaves the whole building without heating or cooling while one area is being serviced.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,275,023, 4,127,141, and 2,746,470 all deal with the problems of servicing pressurized valves. However, none of these prior art patents are suitable for the type of servicing described above.
It is, therefore, an object to this invention to provide a device which will permit the servicing of a valve under pressure. It is also an object to this invention to provide such an apparatus and method as to permit the servicing to be accomplished quickly and efficiently and which requires a minimum of space due to the confined nature of the areas in which such valves are often located.